U.S. economy is still in the recession -- unemployment rate is still high, the value of the home is continuing to slide in some area and consumers are continuing to temper their spending habits. This downturn could be longer and deeper than we anticipated. Most small businesses experience ups and downs. Any reduction in expenses is always welcome and could be result in increasing your profits. A penny saved is more than ever a penny earned.

Here are a few relative painless ways to cut cost and make your business more robust.

Use Free Services

Why pay for something you don't have to? There are a lot of free stuffs on the internet. Web sites, e-mail addresses, fax numbers and conference call services are all among the options business owners can use for little or no charge at all.

How much you pay your accountant each month? $200? With less than $100 priced easy-to-use payroll software like ezPaycheck from halfpricesoft.com, you can handle the payroll job easily yourself. Most payroll software can be downloaded from the website and try free for 30 days. Just pay the software after you feel comfortable.

And do you hire a professional to create to e-letters or flyers? With software like Microsoft Office Publisher, you can select from pre-built templates to quickly and easily create professional-looking e-letters or print the flyers advertising a sale in house with a color printer. Outsourcing

Outsourcing does not always mean sending your business oversea. This is an idea to find talented people not limited in your local geography. From guru.com, elance.com or other websites, you can find web master, bookkeeper and other people that work for you on a subcontract basis.

Marketing Efficiently

If you mail a printed newsletter or coupon to customers, would it be more cost-effective to send out an e-mail? You can save not only printing and paper cost, but also postage.

Instead of buy advertisement from traditional news paper, you can also market online. If you have money, you can use pay-per-click program from Google, Yahoo or other companies. But do not forget there are still a lot of free and effective ways to marketing your company online, such as blog, bookmark, article-marketing, directory-marketing, press release, email-marketing and so on.

If you sell digital products such as software, TrialPay is also an effective and free way to promote your products.

Cut Transportation Cost

The gas price is still high now. Here are some questions to ask: - Do all your sales or services calls need to be in person? Can you help your customers with internet-based technologies such as web conferencing and tools?

- Can your company allow full-time employee to telecommute? It will cut your rent expense, travel and fuel costs. And some studies have shown the employee work from home have increased output and enthusiasm.